Last Stop, a poem by Nancy Botkin

Last Stop

This summer I can’t look at a bathtub drain

without thinking of death—

water circling the small dark holes.

I can’t listen to a shopping cart with one faulty wheel.

I’ve had enough of hospital beds with their machines 

and monitors

and HD TV screens flashing nature’s scenes—lavender fields,

majestic mountains, waving wheat—meant to soothe.

The clouds are building castles like nothing’s wrong.

White water cascades over jagged rocks hatching

the plan it’s always hatched. 

Every cave is an anthem,

a waiting room,

an open mouth with no name.

- Nancy Botkin

Nancy Botkin's poems have appeared in previous issues of Flying Island Journal as well as in Poetry East, The Indianapolis Review, december, The Laurel Review, and elsewhere. Steel Toe Books selected The Honeycomb as their 2022 chapbook prize winner. Her full-length collection, The Next Infinity, was published by Broadstone Books in 2019.